


lionheart

by kathillards



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers R.P.M.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4611696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The light at the end of the tunnel is aching in your bones and all you can think is <i>I hope he makes it home</i>.  ―- ScottDillon</p>
            </blockquote>





	lionheart

**Author's Note:**

> me: [uses second-person for all slash fics to avoid writing with the same pronouns] aesthetic
> 
> actual summary of this fic: dillon is a nerd who's in love and kind of freaks out when scott gets hurt....because he's a nerd who's in love.

**lionheart**

_and as the world comes to an end_  
_i’ll be here to hold your hand_  
_‘cause you’re my king_  
_and i’m your lionheart_

— of monsters and men

x

The light at the end of the tunnel is aching in your bones and all you can think is _I hope he makes it home_.

x

Humanity isn’t as freeing as you thought it would be. At least when the metal in your heart was choking up your lungs, you could pretend you didn’t care, pretend they didn’t matter. Shadow puppets and orange juice and the radio playing as you drive through the wasteland. A pretty girl’s smile and dreams you had of a lost tomorrow and a boy laughing at an explosion. The memories sit inside you like lead weights.

_They weren’t supposed to matter._

x

Halfway out in the desert, Summer gets a call about a boy you used to know falling from the sky, and something goes _thud_ inside of your body.

This was meant to be the happy ending, the new beginning, the resolution after the victory, the freedom after the war. You should have known that wars don’t end, they just take root inside of you and grow branches outwards and upwards until you’re lost in the jungle. In your mind’s eye, you can see the plane tipping over, falling down, crashing open, the blood, the bullets, the bone-shaking fear.

You’re in your car before your sister can ask what happened, the engine roaring dully in your ears. Home isn’t a place, but it’s not anywhere out in the desert, either.

x

The hospital makes you want to throw up. It’s a distinctly human reaction, Tenaya notes, but she agrees. The white walls and the fluorescent lights and the doctors in their starch coats running from end to end without making eye contact with anyone – it makes you want to set yourself on fire.

Everyone else is already there; the three of you were the furthest away, the last to get there. Your hands are shaking as you push past Flynn and Ziggy, only stopping when you can see his face, eyes open, mouth quirked, blood drying on his cheeks.

“Relax,” he says, but his voice breaks from pain. “I’m fine.” Of course he’s fine. He’s never allowed himself to be anything other than fine in his life.

“Yeah, _right_ ,” and you’re glad the words don’t come out shaking, too. “What the _fuck_ happened, Scott?”

He seems reluctant to tell you, so K pipes up from the back where she’s standing, “Rogue grinder that found a plane and learned how to pilot it. He was patrolling outside the dome. All considered, it could have been much worse.”

Scott grins as if to say, _See?_ But you can’t see how it could have been much worse than him lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a heart machine.

“At least I’m not dead,” he says cheerfully. Summer hits him in the unbroken arm. You clench your fingers over the edge of his bed and try to find a smile somewhere.

At least he’s not fucking _dead_.

x

Everyone stays the night, and the next night, and the night after that. Eventually, the doctors fix him up to the point where he can go home, and he insists everyone else goes back to their lives, and they all refuse, of course. All eight of you end up in his apartment for three more days, making sure he’s still alive and there and _alive_ , until he’s managed to convince them all that he really is.

Eventually, real life calls them all, except you. It’s like the incident has unhooked your heart from your ribs, knocked it loose, sent it rattling around the confines of your body. You hate it, just a little, but you listen to it. ( _Humanity_ , Tenaya says, but she doesn’t seem unhappy about it.) You give Summer the keys to your car and the two of them head out back to the wasteland to restore the world.

And you stay.

At first, Scott doesn’t question it. He lets you make him coffee because his arm is still in a cast and he lets you scare away the reporters at his door and, once, even his father. You take one of the guest rooms of his penthouse apartment and lie awake at night listening to his breathing in the room down the hall, making sure it’s there.

_One, two, three. One, two, three._

He’s real, he’s alive, he’s alive.

It’s enough, for now.

x

“Dillon,” he finally asks, one night when the two of you are sitting in his living room, watching the news of the city on mute, drinking vodka from the bottle, “why are you still here?”

You open your mouth, but you don’t have a reason. The truth is, the thought of abandoning him for wastelands and wasted dreams seems impossible, inconceivable. You have a world to rebuild, you know this, but you also have a heart to rebuild, and if you leave him now, the holes might get filled with metal once again.

“Got nowhere else to be,” you say, because blatant lies are easier than half-truths, and take another swig of vodka. “Want me to leave?”

He’s staring at you, eyes bright, searching for something in your face. You don’t know what, and you don’t know if he’s found it when he says, “I can take care of myself.”

“Really?” you ask dryly, the presumed invitation to leave hitting you in the gut, but you can’t let him see. “Last I checked, we left you alone for a few months and you got _shot out of the sky_.”

Scott sighs, staring down into his glass. “You know that’s a danger all the time, right?” he asks. “I’m a _squad commander_. My life is always going to be at risk. It didn’t end just because we stopped being power rangers – ”

You interrupt him, unable to take the way your heart is constricting at his words, “If you want me to leave, just say so.”

There’s a moment of silence. For one horrible second, you think he might say yes.

But he says, “No,” and, a minute later, “I don’t want you to leave. I just don’t understand why you haven’t.”

“For fuck’s _sake_ , Scott,” because he can’t possibly be that oblivious, because you know – you _know_ – that everyone else knows, even Gem and Gemma, and it’s not like you’ve ever been good at being subtle. You drop the empty bottle on the carpet, alcohol and adrenaline and anger running through your veins, and you lean over and you kiss him.

For a moment, you think he’s going to push you away.

But he doesn’t.

x

You wake up in his bed with only hazy memories – hands on bare skin, his lips hot on yours, your mouth tracking his scars down his body – of the night before. The other side of the bed is empty, but the sheets are messy and scattered everywhere. You reach for them just as he walks out of the bathroom, already dressed for the day, the red of his shirt brighter in the daylight than it had been last night.

“Hey,” he says slowly, watching you like he’s worried you might jump. You clench the sheets between your fists, trying to find the words. “Are you – did you sleep well?” he asks feebly.

A laugh escapes you. “Did I _sleep well_?” you ask, amazed, and a half-sheepish, half-amused grin appears on his face. “You mean after you fucked me, did I sleep well? Yes, Scott, I did.”

“Shut up,” he says, but he doesn’t seem annoyed. “Do you want breakfast? I have – I don’t know – pancakes, or something.”

“You can make pancakes?”

“I _was_ on the path to being self-sufficient before you took over my kitchen, you know.”

It feels like normalcy, laughing with him. You’re naked and in his bed and he still has a broken arm, but it feels like happiness. Like everything will be okay again, if only for a moment.

x

“So, uh, we should talk,” he suggests over breakfast once you’re both dressed and sitting at the kitchen island. “About – well, about…”

“Last night?” you offer as he trails off.

“Not exactly,” he says slowly. “I – talked to my dad, this morning. Since I’m off duty until my arm heals up, he said I should – well, I shouldn’t just sit around the house all day alone.”

You raise an eyebrow, but he continues quickly before you can ask why his father thinks he’s living alone.

“And Gem is doing pretty great as temporary squad commander so I thought… well, my father suggested, but I thought – I could come with you guys, for a bit.”

“With – with us?” you ask, confused for a moment until you remember. “ _Oh_. You mean – Summer and Tenaya and us.”

“Summer and Tenaya and you,” he agrees, watching you closely. “You’d come too, right?”

You want to laugh. “Yeah,” you say, and then, because you don’t know how or why you left him in the first place –  “I’d go anywhere with you.”

Scott smiles, unbidden and uncontrolled, his cheeks red but his eyes bright. You bury your smile in his pancakes, trying not to let on the way your heart has slammed into your throat, breaking every lock you ever tried to put on it, jumping up and down like you have something to celebrate.

You don’t, not really. But then, maybe you do.

x

 _Humanity_ , Tenaya says again when you and Scott meet her and Summer out in the desert where flowers are starting to grow. She doesn’t seem surprised to see him, or you, or you and him together. She just hugs you and says softly, _I guess this is what we were fighting for._

She has the right idea. You can’t feel the metal in your blood anymore. All that’s left is a heart unbroken and your hands shaking as you kiss him that night. It’s the middle of the end of the apocalypse, and all you can think is, _I’m glad I made it home._


End file.
